Remove Hrekyu Pop-up Virus — How to Remove?

Hrekyu pop-up notifications may show up out of the blue, covering the content of the website you checked or opening your browser when you do not want it to be opened.

Clicking on the Hrekyu promotion may cause the injection of other malware or unwanted programs. In this guide, you will see the guideline of Hrekyu popups removal in a couple of manners, and also examining your personal computer for other viruses presence.

It is better to prevent, than repair and repent!

Removing Hrekyu manually may take hours and may damage your PC in the process. I recommend you to download GridinSoft Anti-Malware for threats removal. Allows to complete scan and cure your PC during the trial period.

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What are Hrekyu pop-ups?

Hrekyu popups are an effect of adware presence. Adware is a type of malware that shows you the pay-per-view of pay-per-click ads, which creates a major amount of income for adware distributors. These ads might have sometimes shocking content, or have a link to malicious content/website, because adware maintainers have no purpose to inspect the goodness of the content they are going to show – their single target is money.

Hrekyu push notification.

Pop-up promotions itself is an excellent, cheap and very effective marketing tool¹. It makes it possible for the vendor to link the customers’ attention to their website, as well as the buyers to receive the dynamic updates on the goods they intend to purchase. When the consumer will receive a pop-up alert that the TV set he wishes to purchase is offered at the online store he/she visited previously with a 15% price cut, one will undoubtedly use this possibility and get it. Considering the extremely low cost for the popups and their targeting, such an advertising instrument is a favourite thing amongst the marketing departments of huge internet stores.

Nevertheless, such a profitable plan could not be missed by malware developers. Potential to show the popup advertisements forcibly to the victims of malware attack is a great basis for malicious manipulations with the popup promotions. And Hrekyu.com advertisements is among hundreds that are “employed” in this system.

Here is a short summary for the Hrekyu site

How have I got the Hrekyu virus?

There are a plenty of ways of becoming contaminated by the adware that result in the Hrekyu popups tornado. A lion’s part of this malware cases is after the freeware or cracked programs, that are spread on the peering networks. Freeware may additionally be downloaded from the main website, and the adware is delivered as a legit bundled program.

There is no need to blame yourself. A huge amount of individuals often make use of the unreliable programs from untrusted sources: abandonware, a wide range of utilities that are free, and even hacked programs. All of these sorts of applications are dangerous, since it is quite easy to include a Hrekyu malware under the cover of part of the license hacking script, or as a component of the self-made algoritm within the Windows optimization tool.

Hrekyu popup virus may additionally be hidden in the promotion somewhere on the strange website. Such websites are typically loaded with intense and blinking advertisements, and their owners usually accept any kind of promos to be placed on their web page. Thus, clicking on such banners is a shot in the dark: only the advertisement contractor knows what will happen when you click this ad. Besides some “light” viruses, like adware or unwanted programs, you may also receive something far more damaging, like ransomware or coin miner; the substantial share of coin miners circulation is exactly after the malicious promotions.

The statistic shows that people dislike popup advertising more than other types of promotions

Potentially undesirable applications, like Hrekyu pop-up virus can cause a lot of troubles on your computer. Distracting is not the only effect – pop-up notifications may show you the banners, where you are offered to download another dubious program, or “a amazing security tool”. Scareware is often spread with the use of the last motto. Potentially undesirable applications, in turn, may have spyware functions. And it is quite hard to distinguish the undesirable app from a legit one, if you don’t know the exact names. Besides the potentially unwanted programs and pseudo antiviruses, popup-related ads are also chosen as a spreading way by different trojan viruses, for instance – coin miners. The consequences of activity of such viruses is 100% unwanted, and can cost you several hundreds of dollars. And even if you are not tapping these advertisements, they may be clicked by whoever who also makes use of your PC – parents, children, spouse, etc. So the things may become much more serious, and it will be much harder to solve it without information loss. It is recommended to eliminate the viruses with antivirus applications as soon as possible.

How can I get rid of Hrekyu pop-up advertisements?

The guide of Hrekyu adware clearing contains 2 parts. First, we need to eliminate the malware, and after that repair the results of its activity. The elimination process is really easy, due to the fact that it may be executed even with using Microsoft Defender – anti-virus tool that is available on all computers with Windows 8/10. Nonetheless, due to its large resources consumption, as well as some defects that can be pivotal for some types of users, Defender is often turned off by the users, so its use is probably impossible. Furthermore, a variety of trojan viruses can shut off the embedded antivirus. It is much better to use the separated program that will not have such exposures.

I’d recommend you to use Gridinsoft Anti-Malware² – a well-proven antivirus device that will definitely wipe out the viruses from your computer and also make an invulnerable shield with a Proactive protection function. But let’s take care of Hrekyu adware first.

Removing Hrekyu popup virus with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

• Download and install GridinSoft Anti-Malware. After the installation, you will be offered to perform the Standard Scan. Approve this action.

• Standard scan checks the logical disk where the system files are stored, together with the files of programs you have already installed. The scan lasts up to 6 minutes.

• When the scan is over, you may choose the action for each detected virus. For all files of Hrekyu malware the default option is “Delete”. Press “Apply” to finish the malware removal.

Now, when the computer is clean of viruses, we can proceed to the browser reset. You can do this step manually, as well as with the use of GridinSoft Anti-Malware.

Reset browser settings to default

Manual method of browser reset

To reset Edge, do the following steps :

1. Open “Settings and more” tab in upper right corner, then find here “Settings” button. In the appeared menu, choose “Reset settings” option :

2. After picking the Reset Settings option, you will see the following menu, stating about the settings which will be reverted to original :

For Mozilla Firefox, do the next actions :

1. Open Menu tab (three strips in upper right corner) and click the “Help” button. In the appeared menu choose “troubleshooting information” :

2. In the next screen, find the “Refresh Firefox” option :

After choosing this option, you will see the next message :

If you use Google Chrome

1. Open Settings tab, find the “Advanced” button. In the extended tab choose the “Reset and clean up” button :

2. In the appeared list, click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” :

3. Finally, you will see the window, where you can see all the settings which will be reset to default :

Opera can be reset in the next way

1. Open Settings menu by pressing the gear icon in the toolbar (left side of the browser window), then click “Advanced” option, and choose “Browser” button in the drop-down list. Scroll down, to the bottom of the settings menu. Find there “Restore settings to their original defaults” option :


2. After clicking the “Restore settings…” button, you will see the window, where all settings, which will be reset, are shown :

When the browsers are reset, you need to ensure that your web browser will definitely be connected the correct DNS while connecting to the site you need. Make a text file titled “hosts” on your desktop, then open it and fill it with the following lines³:

Find the hosts.txt file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc directory. Rename this file to “hosts.old.txt” (to distinguish it from the new one), and then move the file you created on the desktop to this folder. Remove the hosts.old from this folder. Now you have your hosts file as good as new.

However, there is one problem that makes the things much more difficult to restore, particularly without the anti-malware program. The majority of adware versions that are used to show you the Hrekyu pop-up promotions are changing the deep browser configurations, disabling an access to the settings tab. So, if you attempt to fix your browser settings after your computer was penetrated by pop-up-related malware, your browser will certainly crash soon. In some cases, you will see no crash, but large lag spike after pressing the “settings” key. Browser will stop reacting for ~ 30 secs, and then it will be back to the normal, up until you try to open settings once again.

Reset your browser settings with GridinSoft Anti-Malware

To reset your browser with GridinSoft Anti-Malware, open the Tools tab, and click the “Reset browser settings” button.

You can see the list of the options for each browser. By default, they are set up in the manner which fits the majority of users. Press the “Reset” button (lower right corner). In a minute your browser will be as good as new.

The browser reset is recommended to perform through the antivirus tool by GridinSoft, because last is also able to reset the HOSTS file without any additional commands.

1. More about pop-up advertisements on Wikipedia.
2. GridinSoft Anti-Malware review and also the reasons why I suggest it for malware removal.
3. Official Microsoft guide for hosts file reset.